


riptide

by pajama_sama



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Existentialism, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Surreal, domestic intimacy, for ur heart and soul, mild body horror, needles and injuries and all that stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23436229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pajama_sama/pseuds/pajama_sama
Summary: Yharnam is a city full of ghosts.Most times, there's no use trying to avoid them: they'll dog your every step, keen on telling you their stories. But the Hunter has ghosts of his own, and on some nights they are louder than others.
Relationships: Alfred/The Hunter (Bloodborne)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 74





	riptide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hauteclare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauteclare/gifts).



> prompt fill: wound care. 
> 
> this was perfect for solemn Ashe and Mr Unhinged Sunshine, Alfred. Ashe belongs to the most lovely @ebelcities on twitter... ♥

He dreams of the ocean, vast and inscrutable. 

It stretches out all around him, forward and behind, expanding in a glassy horizon as far as the eye can see. 

On other nights, he falls through the dark depths below, struggling to breathe, feeling the terror of a dying creature as ice fills his throat and nose and the abyss claims him forever. Sometimes he sees the village of his childhood, the windswept rocks and the fishing nets piled in the battered boats, the tempestuous skies and roiling clouds; but it’s always empty, devoid of the people he knows and loves, instead inhabited by a creeping sense of dread. Cold and still. 

Tonight it’s none of those things—Ashe is just standing here atop the water, by himself, suspended by the fantastical physics of unreality. This ocean makes no sound. There are no whispering waves, no froths of foam. Perhaps something lives in this place, something colossal and unknowable, so beyond comprehension that he cannot even perceive its presence. Perhaps that’s simply the human fear of being alone speaking. 

Ashe stares at the water beneath his feet, wondering how far down it goes. If there’s any light at the bottom. 

He walks a distance, in no particular direction, wandering through the light fog aimlessly. Ripples move out from under his shoes, undulating away. With no barriers to stop them, they’ll go on forever, until the momentum wears out and they fade, leaving no evidence that they’d ever been. He’s skipped many a pebble and rock in his time: he would watch them fly out over the pond, count their ripples as choice of stone sank, and stay there as they strengthened and waned, traveling to shore in ever-weakening patterns. Even as a young boy, he’d been intrigued by the inevitability of it. If every stone was meant to sink, was there really a point in throwing them at all? 

In time he reaches a stretch of this fantasy landscape where an impossible thing is happening: a tall tree is growing out of nothing, its roots reaching into the deep. It is a paradox, beauty watered by poison. 

Salt and blossoms are repellent to one another; most plants die by the seaside proper. He learned as much from his cousin—and she is the only reason he can recognize the flowers growing amid the glossy leaves of the tree. Cyclamens, red-stemmed and white-petaled, no greenhouse darlings; he knows because he can smell their fine perfume in the air, that sweet, light scent that calls lily of the valley to mind. 

_They’re so lovely,_ Cousin had said, cupping one of the flower heads in her hands. _Do you know what they mean?_

No. Of course he hadn’t. Flowers _meant_ things? It’d been news to him. 

_Not to worry,_ Cousin had assured him. _I’ll tell you. They mean ‘goodbye.’ Isn’t that strange, for so pretty a thing? Goodbye…_

He’s certain cyclamen do not grow on trees.

But then, neither do men walk on water—and oceans are not eternal. 

Ashe looks on as the smooth bark of the tree roils and splits; and sap pours from those wounds, thick and transparent, and he breathes in the fresh sharpness of resin. A searing ache spreads from his spine to his shoulders—the cyclamens grow redder, and stems of new growth sprout from the bark’s bleeding injuries, long strands of lavender, glistening and bizarre, because they should not be here. He should not be here. 

The pain grows, scorching at him. He thinks the lavender is in his lungs, too: he can taste it in his mouth, on his teeth and tongue. 

He is about to bloom— 

—and then he wakes. 

  
  


***

  
  


His shirt and coat are ruined. Blast.

The fabrics over the place where the werewolf caught him is tattered; the skin itself is sticky and crusted, though much of the initial laceration has shut thanks to the aid of his last blood vial. When he is recovered, he will have to go looking for more. Stupidly—and unprofessionally—he’d found a small alleyway in which to hide after the altercation, sat down to wait for the vial to work its wondrous magic, and… fallen asleep, leaned against the wall. Like some naive neophyte, oblivious to the dangers of Yharnam’s streets.

Walking is not pleasant. 

It causes the bits of shirt, plastered to the edges of the half-open cut, to pull and tug. It is therefore slow going—an agonizing amount of minutes pass as he stubbornly shuffles his way out of the alley, into the street, up the stairs on the opposite side, and onto _another_ street, at the end of which is the lantern he seeks. With every step, the awareness of his lessened mobility increases. Should he be set upon by a beast right now, he is not completely certain he would be able to fight it off without adding to his collection of scrapes and bruises.

That swelling feeling of peril does not abate, even when he places his palm on the lantern, even when the ghostly little messengers greet him with outstretched hands. It relents when the haze of the lantern intensifies, and he senses himself being pulled forward through the messengers’ portal. 

He thanks the creatures quietly for their service; they gasp and sigh and grasp at the edges of his coat as he walks past, leaving them behind. He’s arrived at his destination and is not intending to delay any longer. 

Over the last few weeks, the facade of this abandoned house has gone from being just a relieving sight to something almost like home. It is a beautiful structure, built in the New Yharnam style that favors red brick, with magnificent towering eaves and an exquisite balustrade that has, surprisingly, suffered no damage; the place was long empty by the time he found it, its doors unlocked, the things inside almost untouched by the chaos of the world outside. The beds had still been made, the cutlery and porcelain still in their drawers and cupboards, coal and wood stocked—like the inhabitants had merely evaporated one day, in the middle of their very ordinary lives, their single legacy the little stories told by objects like a half-empty tea kettle, or a chair drawn askance, as though someone had only just gotten up. 

That is what’s nonsensical about Yharnam: there are no looters, just hunters and beasts, or those somewhere in between. After the initial purge, the mad frenzy to gather materials with which to construct pyres, there was silence; and it is silence that remains the rule of the city, in the houses and on the roads, in the chapels and the shops. 

There have been some changes since he and Alfred commandeered the house, of course: the windows have mostly been boarded, and every exit save two has been soundly barricaded. An insignificant price to pay for the luxury of real beds and coverlets, or the ability to draw hot water through the house pipes and into the bath. 

_A bath_. A heavenly prospect.

He is immediately accosted the instant he is over the threshold—not that he expected any less from Thomas, the warden of the house. 

Thomas is special in the fact that he walks on four legs rather than two, and he is extremely partial to the fish in tins that Ashe sometimes finds in deserted stores. Thomas was here before either of them, Alfred or Ashe, sleeping on the burgundy chaise lounge by the fire, and watching the world outside go by with his bluebell eyes. He is the color of good heavy cream, tipped at the ears and striped tail with a dusty grey; he is also one of the largest cats Ashe has ever seen, easily weighing in at shy of a stone, with paws like tiny cushions and an intelligent, inquisitive expression. 

Lastly, he is possessed of the unique talent of being surpassingly noisy when excited.

“There you are,” Ashe murmurs as he shuts the door and bars it, his voice barely audible over Tom’s enthusiastic mewling. “Hello to you too.”

Ashe gave the cat his name—Tom for Thomas, Tom for tomcat. Not the most clever of baptisms, though fitting. 

He’s trying to shrug off his coat when Alfred emerges from the living room, clad in nothing but a loose shirt and a pair of dark breeches. It’s odd to see him in such casual dress, but not unpleasant. There’s something familiar and trusting about it, but focusing on it too much will do Ashe no favors—it is what it is, and whatever it may be, he will enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Things that are precious seldom live a storied life, after all. 

“I thought you might be returned,” Alfred says, thin lips crooking in amusement. “The alarm went up.”

Ashe glances at Thomas, who is now affectionately winding a complicated path around all the legs suddenly available, lost for words. 

He is saved—or perhaps stopped—from formulating a response by Alfred reaching out and carefully hooking a finger under one of the edges of his mask, sliding it down over his cheeks, until it’s resting in a wrinkled, semi-scarf around his neck. 

The air in lower Yharnam and the older parts of the city—the rooftops Djura haunts, the slums where the most senior of beasts prowl—gets fouler by the day. The longer the pyres burn, the more ash lifts into the sky. When the sun used to set over the city, it had always been in scarlet and crimson, turning the firmament to fire. The mask, therefore, is sometimes a necessity. Though after today a good cleaning is _definitely_ in order. 

Alfred ghosts a knuckle over his jaw, a thumb at his bottom lip. Under his coat, Ashe shivers. 

“You look dreadful,” Alfred remarks. His brow is creased in concern. 

“Much obliged,” Ashe says dryly. “I must wash.”

Alfred chuckles. “Do that. I’ll get the needle and thread.”

  
  
  


***

  
  


He spends almost half an hour in the bath, painstakingly peeling himself from his definitely unsalvageable shirt. 

Thomas keeps him company the entire time, sitting on the rim of the tub like some furred statue, his brushy tail swinging back and forth. He sniffs at the water with his rosebud-pink nose now and then, and observes with curious interest as it swirls with blood and dirt. Tom finally scuttles away when Ashe lifts himself from his seat with less elegance than usual; some liquid escapes over the edges and splatters on the tiles of the bathroom floor, lashing him with guilt. He’ll have to remedy that later, possibly after a good sleep. 

He catches sight of himself in the mirror while he gropes around for a towel: his hair has returned to its normal steely grey, and he can actually see his own skin without a thick layer of grime in the way, pale but flushed from the heat of the bath. He hasn’t been this clean in days. The person in the reflection seems foreign to him: he’s changed since coming to Yharnam, even in physique. The punishing regimen of hunting and blood healing has left him leaner than before. Though the features of the man looking back at him are recognizable—the quicksilver eyes, the solemn visage—he almost feels he’s never seen himself before.

It’s a pointless thought.

Drying off and slipping into fresh trousers is more of an ordeal than he’d like to admit, but Ashe eventually manages. 

The path down the stairs, however, is the true challenge. It takes a full five minutes.

True to his word, Alfred is waiting downstairs in the living room with the needle and thread at the ready, gauze and bandages spread out beside him on the divan. A merry blaze is crackling in the hearth, warning away the chill of Ashe’s body. He settles himself to Alfred’s left, back turned, pathetically cognizant of Alfred’s proximity, the warmth building between them thanks to the lack of distance.

Cautious, calloused fingers trace a circle around where he’s hurt, the contact feather-light. 

“Werewolf,” Ashe explains without prompting. 

Alfred hums. “I might have guessed. Luckily, it’s just the top of this that truly needs any attention. Did you not have enough vials to see you through?”  
  
“No,” Ashe says shortly. 

“Hm. Well, this will sting a bit.”

“Pay me no heed. Just get it done.”

“Always so serious,” Alfred says, and Ashe can hear the smile in his voice. 

Alfred isn’t overly learned in the art of medicine, but he does a passable job. His stitches are neatly tied, if not economically sized, and he doesn’t linger overmuch or fuss needlessly; at first he seemed overly solicitous to Ashe, distracted and quixotic. But he hides an intense, manic focus that comes to the fore in battle, or in times of great concentration. 

Maybe that is why Ashe is so drawn to him, to that indelible proof of life, no matter how horrific. Ashe is used to choking his anger—to suffocating anything that may reveal more than he wishes. He hungers for that blazing certainty. It is in his nature to question. Alfred, though, believes enough for the both of them. 

Moments pass, punctuated by the prick of the needle and the drag of the thread. Alfred works methodically, without distraction, and Ashe keeps as immobile as possible. He contemplates the fireplace, the intricate marble mantelpiece, with its scrolls of ivy and curled edges. Such care went into its design. There are children’s rooms upstairs, too: in one there sits a button-eyed doll on a small bed, with a bow in her hair. He wonders where the little girl that lived and slept there has gone. If she misses clinging to that doll at night, now that it is _always_ night. 

He’s broken out of his ruminations by the press of Alfred’s mouth at his nape, right where his neck and shoulders meet. It’s a soft touch, bordering on hesitant, but intimate—so intimate. Ashe’s breath drains from him in a low exhale, almost a sigh, and one of Alfred’s hands wanders into his hair, curling there in a caress.

“It’s done,” Alfred tells him, lips moving against his skin. “Welcome home.”

Ashe shuts his eyes.

Yes. Home. 


End file.
